If you are looking for a plumber to fix your leaky faucet, and you Google the word “plumber,” chances are that you won’t make it past the fourth search result before you select a tradesman to do the job. And even if you make it past that, you probably won’t get to page two. That is the typical behavior that your average prospective patient exhibits when searching for a dentist. This illustrates the importance of being as high in the organic search listings (ie, the free listings that are just below the paid ads) as possible.
Search Engine Optimization
The term search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the use of specific techniques to get a website listed as high up in the search results as possible. Google has a very specific policy regarding which techniques are considered acceptable to use to boost your web rating and which are considered unacceptable. And because Google is responsible for more than two-thirds of the Internet searches that are conducted, it behooves website owners to follow their rules. Organic listing on Google is free, so the last thing that you want is to be relegated to page 18 or even thrown off completely for doing something improper.
Your wipes cost too much
Approaches to SEO are often placed under the umbrella terms white hat techniques and black hat techniques. As you can probably deduce, white hat techniques are those that are allowed and black hat techniques are those that are not. Owners of dental practices should be very wary of any website provider that promises to shoot them to the top of the Google searches. Chances are that they are using black hat techniques in their approach, and there is a good chance that it will eventually backfire. Once Google finds out, your website will plummet in the rankings, but your web developer will have already been paid. To rise to the top of the organic search results correctly, it takes time, so don’t get too impatient.
Black Hat Techniques
There are a variety of black hat techniques used by web developers that practice owners should stay clear of to avoid being penalized by Google, including the following:
• Content duplication. This is very common, especially for developers who manage a large number of sites. Google frowns on cutting and pasting information; it wants fresh and unique content. If your website provider has promised you original content for your site, take a minute to cut and paste some of it into a Google search to ensure that it isn’t being used on their other clients’ sites.
• Invisible text. Unscrupulous developers will often add a number of keywords to websites in the same color as the background. Users can’t see them, but the search bots can. Google is savvy to this practice, so don’t try it.
• Cloaking. In this technique, the website is programmed to deliver different information to the search engine bots than what the users will actually be seeing.
• Link farms. Some developers will attempt to boost a listing by leveraging a network of hyperlinks where a group of websites all link to each other. Google will eventually sniff that out.
• Link schemes. Don’t try buying links to try to boost your website ranking. Links that are for sale are usually of low quality, and Google includes the quality of a link in its algorithm.
• Keyword stuffing. In the early days of search engines, practice owners could get their websites among the highest ranked by having something like the practice’s name mentioned fifty plus times on the page. Google has identified that this kind of repetition makes any content almost worthless to read and flags such sites.
• Doorway pages. This involves the use of low-quality pages to attempt to increase a website’s ranking for specific keywords, which then direct users to other pages on the site.
Practice owners should check their current websites to ensure that their web developers are not using any of these black hat techniques. Even if you are getting good results now, once Google catches on (and that’s when, not if), you will be the one who pays the price by losing your free advertising.
White Hat Techniques
There are plenty of disreputable black hat techniques that people use to try to quickly improve their rankings in Internet searches. Fortunately, there are also plenty of reputable, or white hat, techniques that practice owners can use to improve their rankings, albeit a little less rapidly, including the following:
• Refreshing content. Content is king. Google wants its users to have an enjoyable experience surfing the web. The more and fresher the content on your website, the better your chances of a higher page ranking.
• Ensuring quality original text. Because content duplication is a no-no, it’s a good insurance policy to sit down and write all of the content for your webpages personally. If you are uncertain about what to include or are struggling to produce text from scratch, you can always use content provided by your developer as an outline and rewrite it in your own words. This way, you can be assured that it is original. Because it takes approximately 500 to 800 words to make a page unique and thus visible in searches, to help cut down on your work, you can pad the pages by interspersing patient testimonials.
• Incorporating visuals. Google loves images. Pepper your site with plenty of pictures. Users tend to get bored just looking at a bunch of text. Want to really bump your site up? Include some video content as well. The more, the merrier.
• Appropriately increasing key words. You want to have plenty of keywords, but Google doesn’t like keyword stuffing, so they have to be incorporated in a readable fashion. If you can find a way to include things like the names of the procedures you perform or the city your practice is located in as many places as possible where it makes sense when read, then that can help with your ranking.
• Using keywords in meta tags. Meta tags are not seen by users, but the search engines see them. They aren’t as valuable as they used to be, but it still doesn’t hurt to include the keywords that you think that people would be searching for.
• Ensuring all images have title and alt tags. The search engine spiders don’t look at your images, so you need to tell them what is in them. This is also another legitimate way to include your keywords.
Choose Wisely
Arguably, the most important components of your website when it comes to searchability are the title and description meta tags. The title tag is what Google will display in bold print in its search listings. It is limited to 60 to 70 letters, so you’ll only have room to include the name of your practice and the keyword(s) that your page is targeting. The meta description is limited to 160 characters. This is what will appear in the couple of lines below the title. Because this is what potential patients will be seeing and using to decide whether to click on your site or not, you should choose your words very wisely.
About the Author
Richard P. Gangwisch, DDS, a master of the Academy of General Dentistry and a diplomate of the American Board of General Dentistry, is a clinical assistant professor at the Dental College of Georgia at Augusta University and practices in a Heartland Dental-supported office in Lilburn, Georgia.
